This money would be a great incentive to get homebrew running on the Wii, (which is lacking due to the availability of modchips). The wii is an excellent console, and I'm looking forward to being able to do more with it.

Perhaps I'm just thinking greedy here, but $500 does not seem all that appealing to me. I mean, sure it's great incentive and a good gesture for advancement, but I'm sure people probably wouldn't get all stoked to try with a mere $500 reward.

Personally, I can't wait till Wii homebrew gets more widespread. I really wish it were as easy as the old first generation Dreamcast days.

I recently managed to get myself a Wii and from playing around with it, I feel there is a lot of untapped potential. Much of this could be accelerated if they made it easier for individual developers to add new channels. Although the Wii does not have a huge amount of processing power, when compared to a home PC, some of the stuff that I could see being added to it:
- MP3 Player, accessing music from SD card or a media server such as iTunes. Currently the only MP3 player is part of the slide show.
- Ability to play MPEG and MPEG4 movies, using codecs other than Motion-JPEG, from SD or a media server
- Support for Bonjour, for discovering services on you local home network.

I know that the Wii is meant to be a games machine, but once you have explored the weather, news and internet channels you realise it could be so much more. This price also makes it very attractive.

On the game front this kind of competition could foster more imagination, than some game companies are will to provide, especially when it comes to using the controller.

TodMinuit wrote:Allowing anyone to develop a Wii Channel -- even if it's only restricted access through something like RSS -- would only have a positive effect on the console.

That is, until people start to find and exploit flaws in it, allowing them to bypass copy protections and/or distribute malicious code via said rss feeds, or cheats that work in multi-player games, for that matter.

Personally, I don't want to have to waste any of the rather finite amount of CPU cycles available on my Wii to anti-virus /

As well as Flash, you can do HTML and JavaScript and graphics in <canvas> – I experimented with an FPS engine [lazyilluminati.com] a while ago, and developed it just with desktop versions of Opera and Firefox, and reportedly it actually works on the Wii too. (Recent nightly builds of Safari also support it – it's nice when browser interoperability works.)

It's quite horrifically inefficient doing all this in a web browser rather than C++, but there's still a lot you can manage that's within the bounds of feasibility, if you use some imagination to simplify what you need the technology to do for you.

Incidentally, I like the idea of supporting open standards like <canvas> and <video> [w3.org] rather than proprietary platforms like Flash, particularly given that everyone using the Wii browser has to (indirectly) pay for licensing the Flash player from Adobe.

As well as Flash, you can do HTML and JavaScript and graphics in <canvas> - I experimented with an FPS engine [lazyilluminati.com] a while ago, and developed it just with desktop versions of Opera and Firefox, and reportedly it actually works on the Wii too.

It doesn't work on the Wii - I just tried.

Even if it did, you wouldn't be able to play it because there's no way to generate keyboard events with the Wii. The only events you do get are mouse motion events and the left mouse button.

The Opera-powered Wii browser is still a very capable browser, but it doesn't quite work for things like that.

The WiiCade API works only on SWF pages accessed through wiicade.com. It does not work on games made with JavaScript and <canvas>, so I'd need to get a second job to afford Flash ($700). Nor does it work on SWF pages being tested on a private server on the local domain.

You can make flash games entirely in actionscript using open source SWF creation tools.

Which tools do you recommend? And how would one go about, say, making something like "He's Back, He's Here, He's Mario" (the U.S. Super Mario All-Stars commercial) or the similar "Miko Miko Nurse" animutation as a game's opening cut scene using these tools?

Only need flash if you want to have any vector animation which is not part of the code.

I just discovered Red Kawa [redkawa.com]. Which has a combination video/music/whatever server that you can access via the Wii Opera Browser. They also have video converter that converts the videos to flash (flv) so you can watch them in the browser. The video quality isn't that great, but it gets the job done. There's also converters for motion jpeg which I imagine would allow you to play videos from the SD slot, although I haven't had the time to try this out yet. I've tried orb [orb.com] which is another app that does the sa

So how do I make Flash games without a $700 devkit? With the DS, I need $500 for a PC, $130 for a DS, and $50 for an R4 and a microSD card. I download the software [devkitpro.org] to CD or microSD at a public library, and then I take it home and install it on my PC. With the Wii, I need $500 for a PC, $250 for a Wii, and either $700 for an Adobe Flash license or $250 for an Adobe Flash Education Edition license and at least $450 for a semester of community college.

Look up "WiiCR" on sourceforge or at wiicr.orgI have it running on my SLES10 file server. I serve all media out to my Wii through opera using WiiCR. Great little utility.On a P4 2.6ghz w/ 1 gig of RAM it takes about 30 seconds of lead time to transcode a video into a FLV. Its not realtime, but, close enough. Also with the HQ resolution transcoding, there is nearly no noticeable loss of quality on my SD tv. (Use the wiipaper theme for a default 480 video, otherwise you may have to use the zoom feature)

Thanks for the suggestion of WiiCR, but I don't have the CPU power for transcoding, so using a Linux PC for media playback continues to be the best option. I could replace that machine if I had an XBox Media Centre-like program for the Wii, and I think that Nintendo are missing a golden opportunity by not supplying one. But thankyou for the suggestion anyway. WiiCR is certainly a clever hack - it demonstrates the lengths that people will go to in order to use the Wii as a media player.This is a needed featu

Check out Red Kawa [redkawa.com] for using your Wii as a media centre. It has an flv converter, so you can transcode things ahead of time if you don't have enough CPU power to do it in real time. Also, it can convert to motion JPEG so you can play movies in the photo channel off an SD card (although I haven't tried this functionality yet).

This Coding Competition will hopefully ignite a mass of interest for creating homebrew and emulators on the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo Gamecube.

The article does not encourage homebrew developers to find a new way to run homebrew on the gamecube, far less on the wii itself (in wii-mode). As far as i can tell from the news post, it is just a GC homebrew competition which does not limit the loader to known methods.

It would be far more interesting if someone already 'known' to the homebrew scene would create a bounty for the first person who is able to run homebrew on the wii (in wii mode, that is).
Something similar to what StoneCypher did with the dswifi library, which was done by sgstair(thanks!).

Unfortunately that is not exactly the kind of thing i was talking about.
That bounty is for getting linux to run (which requires homebrew running, yes, but that should be different goals/projects).

Note that wiili adds a LOT of requisites appart from running homebrew AND booting linux, such as 'Wiimote, keyboard, mouse, dvd drive, sd-card and network support.', (which is not to be taken lightly)
They even add the requisite of not voiding the warranty:P . I think they took a slightly different goal.
That

I don't think anybody who actually has any experience with the GP2X would call it a "crappy knockoff handheld." It's a completely open Linux system with dual ARMs and emulators for many, many past consoles, plus native ports of Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, Quake 2, etc...

Sadly, most people just ignore any console that doesnt have at least a 10% marketshare. Sometimes that is a good thing *cough*ngage*cough*, but other times you get imbeciles posting about great consoles like the GP2x (which i owned, and developed for, until mine was stolen).

Oh! So that's what happened to you! I wished you were still around back when I was trying to work some stuff out with fixed point arithmetic. Anyways, why don't you buy another GP2X? You were a valuable community member and anyways if you participate to such contests [gbax.com] you could consider that an investment;-). Plus the price has dropped, I believe.

So it's not a knockoff handheld, but most everything you list involves it just playing old games originally created for other systems. I'm not knocking the hardware, but most of the interest in the system is from people who just want to play old ROMs on the go.

The problem I see with the Linux community is they spend so much time and energy just trying to get already existing software and technology to run on their systems, that they have little or no time to truly create something new and innovative.

AC wrote:

Also, you're a 100% incorrect

Your evidence? Which titles were created specifically for the GP2X that would make me want to buy a GP2X over a DS with the R4 card?

There are actually commercial games created specifically for the GP2X (check out the store), but this is hardly the GP2X's point. Calling it a "knock-off," as Joreallean has done, is about the stupidest, most uninformed thing I've ever heard.It's a handheld for people who are into the whole homebrew thing and don't want to a) constantly fight Sony with firmware upgrades or b) buy expensive hardware to get homebrew to run on an unsupported handheld like the DS. The GP2X is a fully supported, programmable, Li

There are actually commercial games created specifically for the GP2X (check out the store), but this is hardly the GP2X's point.

Then what is the GP2X's point in practice? Emulators?

Yes.

Tetris clones like the one I made?

Yes.

The point is whatever you want it to be.

I use mine to play Neo Geo games on-the-go on a nice, big screen. I also use it to play around with some game ideas. You could use it to watch TV shows. Or as a Walkman replacement. Or as an organizer. Or to show your pals the game you've made. Or to read a book. It's a toy. You use it for whatever the hell you want.

Also, I don't know what it costs to get a GP2X in the USA. I'm from Europe. I know the GP2X was cheaper than a DS plus a DS-X (which I als

The marketting divisions of Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony seem to be exceedingly blinkered when it comes to home games production on their consoles. It worked for the Amiga, which because of direct support from Commodore (docs and tools) saw the emergence of a huge and extremely buoyant community with legions of Amiga supporters worldwide. And that's only one example.

There is really no reason for NOT supporting private developers, because every console that is purchased will also lead to commercial games sales as well, it's totally inevitable. Some people have suggested that the manufacturers are afraid of competition from the amateur sector, but that is just totally unsubstantiated. After all, all those years of game development and millions spent in asset production cannot easily be rivalled at home.

While there will always be some people who simply cannot afford commercial games, in general the existence of a successful amateur sector would be *additional* to the success of commercial products, and it wouldn't replace them. The argument that the console manufacturers want their cut from licensing games doesn't stand up either, because they will continue to get their cut from those commercial games. If the sectors are additive, then that income is not reduced.

Of course, if the multi-million dollar games are so crap that people prefer the amateur products instead, then there would indeed be an effect, but that's not likely to happen in the general case. Even if the commercial investments are highly inefficient and tied to games with poor/boring gameplay, they still provide *gloss* at least, and so people will still buy them.

I put it down to the truism that "marketting is clueless", as always. Which is a big pity here.

Sony practically encourages homebrew apps on the PS3, what with being able to install Linux on it. Of course, half the things people would install homebrew apps for (media playing / streaming) are already part of the console...

You're restricted from using the graphics processor, which kind of sucks, but other than that you're pretty set. I want to see a PS3 Dwarf Fortress [bay12games.com]. Maybe then a world won't take 10 minutes to generate.

Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft all want to sell development kits and licenses to use them. Officially allowing homebrew would mean commercial developers could make their own devkits, thus depriving the console makers of that revenue stream.

So what. If Nintendo made similar tools available, you'd be vendor locked to them. Supporting homebrew for your products is far from equivalent to the MS mantra 'Embrace, Extend, Extinguish'. XNA is a step in the right direction, but $99USD yearly fees destroy its homebrew credibility. Still, it's already far more fully featured for making a game than what Sony or Nintendo have to offer. When XNA drops its fees, Sony opens up the architecture and Nintendo chime in then we will see a truly powerful amateur m

The argument that the console manufacturers want their cut from licensing games doesn't stand up either, because they will continue to get their cut from those commercial games. If the sectors are additive, then that income is not reduced.

Unless each copy of Lockjaw [pineight.com] means that Microsoft doesn't get its cut from a copy of Tetris [tetris.com].

The marketting divisions of Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony seem to be exceedingly blinkered when it comes to home games production on their consoles. It worked for the Amiga, which because of direct support from Commodore (docs and tools) saw the emergence of a huge and extremely buoyant community with legions of Amiga supporters worldwide. And that's only one example.

There's a subtle difference between the Amiga and the game consoles. The Amiga itself was sold to make money, whereas game consoles sell games

Too closed is probably as bad as too open though, think Mac vs PC or Beta vs VHS. The technically inferior but more ecosystem friendly system ended up with a much bigger market share.The current fashion for user created content makes me think that sooner or later the terms for XNA Creator's club will ease up a bit. In fact, I think it's only because the PS3 is doing rather badly compared to previous Playstations that the terms are as tough as they are. I think commercial and user created games are actually

Microsoft does support Home brewing 360 games. The XNA framework, and their game creator club has really opened up new doors for home brew developers. I mean, for a company to do more than releasing a thin wrapper on OpenGL is really cool. Yeah...they charge the creators a $100 yearly fee to use their service, but you get access to a huge amount of guides and art content for your games to go along with whatever you create. Which, being a hobbyist game developer is a real killer for a project. Because m

Actually, it's part of what killed the Amiga. During the end of the Amiga's life cycle, many game devs stopped support for the Amiga and moved to the Genesis and SNES instead, because piracy on the Amiga was so rampant.

Turrican III, for example, one of the archetypical Amiga games, came out for the Genesis first, and was only later ported back to the Amiga. Factor 5 quoted piracy as the reason why the franchise moved to the Genesis.

Where are the inexpensive dev kits you promised last year, Nintendo? Sony and Microsoft are actually supporting homebrew, Nintendo is dragging their feet. I hope I can look forward to interesting and exciting news at E3 with regard to homebrew, dev kits, and VC originals... but I'm not holding my breath. Please live up to your promises, Nintendo, don't turn this into another GameCube broadband adapter.

I recall reading, and it was almost certainly pure rumor, that the entire process of licensing and acquiring a dev kit would cost as little as $2000. Right here on slashdot, actually, and I replied that I would go for that price in a heartbeat. It wasn't official, but it was a popular rumor.

The problem is that you would have to be a serious coder AND be serious about developing a game that people would want to pay for (even if it's cheap). The thing that always depresses me about homebrew is that it's literally overflowing with emulators and ROMs. If 5% of the homebrew population makes a stink about making it easier for people to load homebrew, and the other 95% is only interested in playing old SNES games, why would a company make the cost of entry any cheaper?

While interesting, it seems that most gamers who want to code a game would rather just code it for a desktop OS.

Xbox 360, Wii, and PLAYSTATION 3, on the other hand, can support four gamepads per TV. Desktop PCs are limited to two gamepads per system due to the smaller physical size of the display. Set-top PCs appear to be so rare that no studio bothers customizing its games for them. So which system should an amateur code a four-player game for?

I think we're getting to the point where multiplayer games are more network-code with multiple-console support, rather than split screen. I personally love getting people together for a 4player game, since I have a large enough TV for it, and I've even gotten 8 people on it (4 player split screen with a vertical split-screen on the tv itself, with a pair of Xbox or GameCubes running it). A lot of fun, but I don't know how much focus there is for amateurs to code multiplayer games in general, let alone "pa

Yup. It's something I've looked into myself. The $2k isn't a big deal but as an indy mobile game developer who just works out of a home office, it's kind of a no-go. The Wii shop channel would be an awesome platform for independant/small game devs to try their hand at a few small, $5 Wii games, nevermind the potential from purely hobbyist homebrew devs. Sure, there probably wouldn't be heaps of great new awesome content but a few gems are bound to turn up and many more "fun time wasters" or even the odd

The one thing that truly bugs me is the lack of support for Wii import games by both chips and loaders. Currently you have to buy a Japanese console to play them.
I would love to give Naruto Shippuuden: Gekitou Ninja Taisen EX for the Wii a try. It is supposed to be the best Naruto game yet.
The imported Naruto fighting games on the Gamecube are amazing. Japanese released Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen! 3 and 4 (which are not available in the US) are much better than the previous versions. I am very gla

Microsoft has the semi-right idea with letting people use the XNA stuff to create games for the 360. Sure it is pretty locked down, but it is still is doable and well documented. The real hard part is that coming up with the idea for a 360 game is HARD, not to mention people expect "next-gen" graphics and sound for 360 games which is almost impossible without a large team. On the other hand, anyone who picks up a Wii controller immediately can come up with 10-50 ideas along the line of a Wii Sports or other

It'd be nice if they'd admit that it's actually a GameCube and emulator contest, since nobody can load homebrew Wii code yet. It'd be even nicer if they focussed their efforts on helping load homebrew onto the Wii, instead of getting emulators developed for a system that doesn't have homebrew at all; some people find that worrisome. DCEmu means well, I guess, but their priorities could sure use a reinvestigation.

Interesting idea, but in practice this is impossible. I wanted to develop for the Wii, so I emailed and inquired about the process of getting a Dev Kit. After reading my email, it was forwarded to the VC dept, because I hadn't had any AAA titles published. At the VC dept level, the email was sat on and I haven't heard from them again. Turns out you have to have a brick and mortar company to be able to develop for the Wii. Not a company you run out of your house, and certainly not a hobbyist developer. This is a major oversight by nintendo, as third party support really matters this time around. And I would love to develop for it.

I thought that the only thing running on Wii was gamecube code. I haven't heard of any actual homebrew that can make use of the wiimote. Did I miss something big here? I hope so because that would be awesome!

Until you get lucky;) Seriously, I have been going to various stores, every once in a while, asking them when their next batch is due. Most either don't know and tell you, that you have to call almost every day to find out and then they are usually sold in a couple of hours. The other day I went to buy a home phone, didn't find the one I wanted and asked on the off chance if they if they knew when the next batch of Wiis was due. Guy told me they actuall

Until you get lucky;) Seriously, I have been going to various stores, every once in a while, asking them when their next batch is due.

If you are in the UK, then GAME make you do this. Those of us who have better things to do than hang around video game stores would be well-advised to try GameStation, who will take a deposit and phone you up when your name reaches the top of the list.

I did the same thing. I didn't quite go to the store every day, but I made sure to check every time I was near a store (about once a week). I managed to pick one up a few weeks ago. It's definitely not something you can walk into a store and buy on any day, but they are out there, and believe me, it's worth it. The Wii is awesome.

I'm sorry, but where do you live?
I'm in Alberta, Canada. I can walk into any store around here and they have at least 10 Nintendo Wiis all the time. They've had a good stock since the end of April.
The fact that people are still having such a hard time finding them is really surprising. If you're in the UK I can understand a bit, but if we have so many here couldn't they improve stock over there very easily?

I'm in Ottawa. There is still a major shortage of Wiis here. And Accessories too. When I got my Wii, I picked up Wiiplay with the controller (although they had just controllers in stock), but was unable to get a second nunchuck. The store clerks reaction was something like, "I swear we had them in stock 5 minutes ago". It was easy enough to find the second nunchuck at Walmart the next day. I completely believe you that there's 10+ machines sitting on the shelves though. I think that some places just

Sorry, no store in the world has "at least 10 Wiis all the time". So you're clearly a liar. But just to be sure, I checked. Not a single Best Buy in Alberta has a Wii in stock right now. The online stock locator showed zero, but I called the Edmonton North store to double check. He told me no one in the province had any either, and checked his own stock locator. I then checked Future Shop online, even though they're owned by Best Buy, and still nothing. Please give me a store in Edmonton that has a Wii in stock that I can call to verify.

You said "most expensive place". What does that mean. Every shop I've seen in my city sells it for exactly the same price which is exactly the same as the MSRP. I didn't think there was much pricing competition on consoles, but maybe that's just the way things are in Canada.

I'm guessing the grandparent was talking about Chadstone Shopping Center since that has Target, K-Mart, Myer, Toys'r'us, EB Games and JB Hi-Fi all selling the Wii in the same building. The biggest price difference I've seen there is about AU$20 though so I can't imagine the average punter bothering to shop around much.

There have been Wiis in stock whenever I've been to Chadstone in the last few months but don't know how many exactly.

I'm not sure where he's talking about, but I do know that a lot of people may not even think to go into a 'hi-buck' place, even if the price will be the same. Or, perhaps it's like Sears. They carry games, but they're not known for them. I'm in the Twin Cities area and I haven't seen a Wii on store shelves since I met my brother in line at the release. He got one so I haven't been checking in as ardently as others. I can just head over to his place.

Seriously, I have been going to various stores, every once in a while, asking them when their next batch is due. Most either don't know and tell you, that you have to call almost every day to find out and then they are usually sold in a couple of hours.

Don't be silly. The scene began on the Dreamcast, and at the time, Homebrew specifically referred to home-made *games* not emulators. There are lots of good home-made games that are 100% legit for consoles.

Sorry, Charlie, homebrew goes back 25 years past the Dreamcast. There were homebrew 2600 carts when the 2600 was less than a year old. It is a little annoying that a Dreamcast homebrewer would get this wrong, since the common way to make Dreamcast software is through DevKitPro, which targets other consoles too - including older ones.